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Project Summary

The overall work plan foresees in one coordination WP plus five technical WP's as listed below:

WP1: ADS on-line reactivity monitoring methodologies

WP2: Subcritical configurations for design and licensing of MYRRHA/FASTEF

WP3: Critical configurations for design and licensing of MYRRHA/FASTEF

WP4: Critical configurations for LFR

WP5: Training and Education

WP6: Coordination of the FREYA Project

General step by step methodology and the relations between the WPs are as follows:

WP1 is the prolongation of the GUINEVERE FP6 Project. In the scope of the GUINEVERE project, two configurations of VENUS-F facility were investigated. The first one was the critical case for the estimation of the main operation parameters of new installation and the following was subcritical configuration with the same core composition as the critical one. In this subcritical case the VENUS-F installation was coupled with GENEPI-3 accelerator. On this stage the coupling of the accelerator with subcritical core was proved and the limited amount of the experiments was fulfilled. A wide range of the experiments for the ADS reactivity monitoring methodologies investigations are prolonged in WP1 of FREYA FP7. In this case, initially the same core composition as in GUINEVERE is used. Also another core configuration (other Keff) but with the same fuel assemblies (FA) as in GUINEVERE are investigated.

For the WP2, the VENUS-F configuration is changed considerably to simulate the MYRRHA subcritical core in more details. For that the essential efforts of the Project are focused on the preparation of a new FAs on the base of the another fuel. The proper composition of the VENUS-F core for the simulation of MYRRHA core details are discussed and chosen with CDT FP7 team.

The same FAs are used for the MYRRHA critical core mock-up in WP3.

For the WP4, the VENUS-F configuration is changed considerably again to simulate LFR core. Before that the essential efforts of the Project are focused to the preparation of a new FAs on the base of the another fuel. The proper composition of the VENUS-F core for the simulation of LFR core details are discussed and chosen with LEADER FP7 Project team.

It should be mentioned that in all WP's that deal with experiments for new installations design and licensing (WP2, WP3 and WP4), almost the same list of the measurements are being envisaged. This list includes the following well-known measurements for core characterisation: spectral indexes, power distributions, control rod worths, void and other reactivity effects. On the base of the long-time mankind experience, these experiments are the most efficient for the core characterisation and sensitive to the uncertainties in the nuclear data and codes used for new advanced reactor core calculations. The key difference in these WPs is the composition of the core VENUS-F. It is changed significantly in Keff (1, 0.95, 0.99, 0.85-0.95), in core composition (fuel enrichment, fuel\coolant ratio, fuel and coolant itself), in reflector composition and in others peculiarities. One has to remember that for reduction of uncertainties in code validation the configurations should always as representative as possible and to some extend also a subset of configurations is envisaged to obtain a sufficiently large envelope in view of licensing. Dedicated efforts are planned in the tasks of these WP's devoted to the cores definition.